SACRAMENTO, Feb. 7 (UPI) -- A delay in renewing driving licenses in California has left thousands of drivers with expired licenses saying they're worried about being cited.
Problems in making California's new, harder-to-counterfeit licenses has about 200,000 people driving with expired licenses and waiting weeks and sometimes months to receive their new ones, The (Riverside, Calif.) Press-Enterprise reported.
There were some problems in producing the new licenses, said Janet Mendoza, a spokeswoman for the Department of Motor Vehicles.
About 10 percent of the 2.5 million state IDs, including driver's licenses and personal identification cards, processed since October had to be sent back because of imperfections, Mendoza said.
"They have to be 100 percent perfect," she said. "If they're not, they're sent back."
Once the cards' manufacturer can reduce the error rate from 10 percent to around 4 percent, hopefully by the end of this month, officials can reduce the backlog, DMV spokesman Mike Marando said.
Drivers driving with an expired license have nothing to fear from police, Mendoza said, because they are aware many licenses are late and the state's database -- available to police -- is updated regularly.
